


the gate of "meeting hill"

by sworn



Category: Chainsaw Man (Manga)
Genre: Additional scenes, Alternate Universe, Canon Compliant, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:35:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29494410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sworn/pseuds/sworn
Summary: "come down," says the one on the ground.
Relationships: Angel Devil & Hayakawa Aki, Angel Devil/Hayakawa Aki
Comments: 9
Kudos: 38





	the gate of "meeting hill"

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. both poems from ogura hyakunin isshu! also the title is from a poem from that collection too.   
> 2\. if you haven't finished csm probably best not to read...  
> 3\. but also thanks for reading.

✠

> _like a rock at sea,  
>  at ebb-tide hidden from view,  
> is my tear-drenched sleeve:  
> never for a moment dry,  
> and no one knows it is there._   
>  — nijo in no sanuki —

✠

in an old playground, one child stares up from the ground at the other who sits on top of the slide.

it starts to rain.

"come down," says the one on the ground.

✠

at the sea, angel learns a few things: how to swim, the meaning of a smile just for you, what a house is versus what it can be...

...the weight of a small pink-orange shell in his palm next to a triangle of green frosted sea glass, the kind that seems almost blue in a certain light, and a voice saying: "this one is you, and this other one is them."

"who is 'them'?"

a giggle, lost or twined through as interlaced fingers with the wind chimes and the waves.

"you know, _them_."

✠

how could he forget?

✠

aki hayakawa. age 25. notably good at his job in the company but also not living a life that can be deemed anything but fairly ordinary. single. lives with his two roommates who may or may not be dating and may or may not send him to an early grave from stress or inopportune laughter. has a cat. well, it's power's cat. _shares_ a cat, if the fur on his bed is anything to go by. 

content. vaguely.

a buzz from his phone has him slipping it out, waiting for the elevator with his jacket over his arm and his briefcase pinched in the same hand. 

drinks? :)

he rolls his eyes and fires off the reply he knows himeno already expects and heads to the usual place. 

chalk it up to an exhausting few weeks with meetings and presentations and pitches and all the usual nonsense. chalk it up to another text from himeno, one of the only people in aki's life he feels sort of prone to replying within a certain reasonable amount of time. chalk it up to whatever. he doesn't notice when he gets the pedestrian signal that a car is still coming.

well. he does notice; but too late.

or it would be except for something yanking him back so hard it actually sends him falling full weighted and crash-landing to the ground. a disgruntled slightly pained sound from underneath him has aki moving before he fully understands what happened, his palms rubbed raw with concrete as he peers down at a face he's never seen before.

they fell harder than either of them meant to, perhaps. the stranger looks dazed, staring up at aki as if from some indeterminable distance. the streetlight at the corner casts light across their face in a way that halos out against the pale red of their hair and aki peripherally wonders if it's real while also already knowing that it is. a slow blink, another slow blink. he should move, stop effectively pinning this person to the ground as he feels people deliberately giving them a wide berth for any number of reasons. whispers of 'you think it's a fight...?' and 'no didn't you see he almost got hit by that car!!!' and 'uhhh are they okay...do we call someone?' mingling and repeating.

"hey...hey —" 

the stranger's voice is softer than aki expected. his own voice seems somehow lodged in his throat and completely uncooperative. he's going to be late to meet himeno. he should text her. these thoughts run through his head but he can't make good on any of them, watching as the person beneath him seems to sharpen up a little, watching the gentle part of his mouth as he says,

"— do you have handkerchief?"

✠

hunting devils is messy, thankless business. angel knows most of the people who come here have their own agendas whether small or large. the devils themselves all have contracts.

except him.

makima takes him from the countryside and angel learns what he already knows even without his memories: the city is dangerous, and so is he.

✠

working with number-one devil-hater aki hayakawa could be significantly worse than it is. he expects angel to do his job, which, well, get in line. he also doesn't expect much else, which, well, good. and angel believes he is fine letting it be like this, his usual bare minimum enough to scrape through until his time comes (not soon enough, he's often thought) or until aki's time comes.

it's only after he learns from power how little time that actually is that something shifts. in truth, the feeling is subconscious: a long motionless set of gears slowly starting to move again, and if they seem to be the shape and size of a human heart, never mind; never mind. if they feel familiar like green almost blue frosted sea glass and the sun on his wings without fear or hate, never mind. never mind.

he asks aki why he lied and it doesn't end up mattering anyway. more people die than live in the flurry of bomb's path towards denji. 

angel almost dies too, and, with warm arms folded around him tight, he realizes that it isn't that aki lacks fear; it's that aki is not afraid of _him_.

aki tells him he's sick of people dying in front of him and angel thinks for the first time in his own memory:

_sorry...and thank you._

✠

what aki doesn't tell angel, not once, not ever: _you're not allowed to die first_.

✠

in a world that looks like the same world and might be but might not, a knight-to-be is sent to slay a dragon. 

what he finds in the oldest part of the forest is a boy as feral as his environment. 

and he's dying. slowly. surely.

the boy has wings. later, he informs aki without words that they no longer let him fly. 

aki doesn't return from this forest for a long time, makes a choice that's no contract but also not a promise either; just two paths intersecting for a while...for long enough. 

come the thirteenth moon, he holds the "dragon's" treasure — a circlet narrow and unadorned but undoubtedly gold and imbued with some kind of magic aki does not understand. he carries it not because he killed him but because it was given to him.

the kingdom calls the dragon simply that, "dragon", but aki calls him something else.

> _"aki," he says, and holds his hand to himself. this goes on for a week, aki bringing water, seemingly by happenstance also leaving bits of foraged plants, feeling gratified when they disappear._
> 
> _eight sunsets later, in the middle of the night, not sleeping, not really, he hears:_
> 
> _"...aki."_
> 
> _when he turns over to lean up on his elbow, he hears him skitter back more than sees him, given how dark it is...but he nods, looking that direction anyway. "yes."_
> 
> _so long passes, he settles down again, closes his eyes, and if he weren't so well trained to discern the truth for his own good, he'd miss it entirely, the soft sea-born whisper:_
> 
> _"angel."_

the knighthood aki receives feels hollow but feeds him, feeds the boy he was shackled with not long ago as well as the girl who ended up apprenticed with him despite their rather unorthodox methods. it lets him pay back himeno as well. and later, when he's very old and closer to his title only in name, aki travels farther than he ever intended to from the kingdom's capitol. he stops at the place in the forest that's more overgrown than ever, erasing the evidence that a "dragon" ever hid here waiting to die. he stops in the town he came from and pays his respects to his family, all slaughtered by the kind of dragon he thought he'd spend his life trying to kill. but he doesn't stop, not completely, not for real, until he reaches an even smaller town at the edge of the sea.

there he finds his way into a house that's barely standing, but when he touches his weathered hand to its weathered frame he feels incredibly warm.

a similar warmth to angel's "treasure" in his hands.

the sea laps at his bare ankles. there are no people here.

but the seashells are many and pretty and jewel bright, in myriad with the sea glass and the wave worn stones that echo with things that go both forwards and backwards in time. such is the sea; the liminal space where things are both always and never, known and a mystery. 

once in the forest, aki held angel's hand, watched as their palms pressed and angel of his own accord slotted his thinner fingers between aki's, just to see if he could. 

at the sea, aki is reminded of that and doesn't know why.

✠

it's not that aki doesn't know angel is there. he does; of course he does. everyone knows. it is not as though makima made a great secret of it; rather, she seems to want people to know, and when she designates aki to work with him he has no real argument he can give.

later, when he might have concluded that makima knew anyway, it will be too late.

but in that moment, he watches through the glass as angel seems to argue with power (unsurprising, as that's never not been true as far as he can tell), and tries to refuse anyway, only for makima to give him no room to do so.

"make use of him."

the words are poison. but aki likes makima, and sometimes, sometimes he thinks the weird dreams he knows are memories of angel, of a forest, of a halo he can touch, are just that: dreams. even if they aren't, he can't go against makima, wouldn't. his family died in this life the same as before, just a different executioner and as before, it is in his mind, still his fault. he wonders if this is a form of karma, if at the very very first of his lives, he was so terrible that all the people he loved had to then in each successive life, die before him? better that he had never existed at all then...

there is no proof that angel knows what he's thinking or hears him. they've never 'met'.

though aki knows him quite well: the pout of his mouth when he's displeased, the tired lazy half-mast of his eyes when he's pretending he doesn't care, the very minute tension in his wings when people get too close because a false dragon is still a false dragon whatever his incarnation. 

angel looks up through the glass, catches aki's eyes, like some subconscious, long-dead part of angel himself woke up just to tell aki one thing:

 _don't you dare_.

✠

typhoon's storm is the excuse aki needs. he both lies to angel and tells him the truth, wraps his arms too tight around him and revels briefly in the touch of his wings because they can't hurt him, and therefore cannot hurt angel either, angel who later will tell him he dreams of ghosts and aki will think but not say: _i know_.

he shouldn't be able to feel anything in the midst of the wind and all the flying debris but aki feels it anyway: the way angel trembles in his hold like a perfect study in withdrawal.

✠

the concrete under his hands burns but it's nothing compared to when aki sits back on his heels, tugs his handkerchief out of his pocket to pass over to the stranger, and their hands brush.

it burns but it's cold. it's nothing and it's everything. warmth. the sea. a forest. the sound of wings and a voice telling him to run.

all in a half second, then gone. aki blinks, not sure what he was thinking of.

angel, however, pressing the handkerchief to the blood welling on aki's own hand rather than his own, knows almost exactly the shape and weather of his thoughts, the misery and the thin halo glimmers of hope that never panned out, and it's funny or maybe it isn't. in this life, he is still the country mouse but he knew he'd find aki here.

he's not sure if he's happy to be right but he knows he needed to be, regardless.

at least in this life, he can touch him.

he wonders if the next will be different, if there is a cosmic sort of set of scales for that sort of thing, and then he decides it doesn't matter; he has no control over it.

instead he focuses on what he can control, eying aki's scraped hand with a slight purse to his mouth, pinch in his brow, unaware of aki watching him more closely than he means to.

"did you save me?" how blunt. angel almost smiles.

"uh huh," he replies, bored sounding, pushes aki's hand back towards him and takes his other hand just to press the handkerchief down with it, letting go himself. it hurts, but that's fine. it looks like in this life aki doesn't know him. fair. angel only remembered him last time right before they died, and a lot of no good it did them.

even in the half-there light of night and street lamps, aki's eyes are sea glass, the cut of sky between the hour before midnight and the hour after, the color between green and blue, the cadence of waves, the history and mythos of which always spell some kind of loss.

angel misses the sea, but that's always true.

✠

apparently when the "dragon" dies the forest will forget him. aki, stubborn in any reality, says he won't, and angel hides his smile behind the soft forward-fall of his hair, bites his lip, and severs an invisible cord that bleeds invisible life like light that flows out from beneath a door to the outside. he's almost out of time, and he'd rather not waste the part of him that might be valuable to the one person he wanted to see — not 'the most', but rather, at all. giving it to aki is the least and also everything he can do.

it's fine.

the circlet looks delicate as its word, halo reminiscent of all the stained glass paintings, but the weight of it is staggering once placed in aki's hands. 

"take it."

"but,"

"i don't need it when i'm dead."

"...angel."

dragons. angels. devils. lost boys. 

who among them know best how to kiss?

the answer: none.

but 'angel' has been or will be or always has been, all of these, and he does his best.

his tapered fingers glance along aki's jaw the way they'll never be able to in the next life and he kisses him, pleads the form of a word into his mouth learned from aki, for aki,

" _please_."

thinks: let me — let me _be of use_.

✠

_"make use of him."_

✠

angel remembers what he forgot when makima found him, but he remembers the forest too. in this life, he cannot save aki much less help him. though now he thinks of his dreams and feels the words he said to aki were twofold: you would become one of those faces. yes. but also: i couldn't bear that.

 _next time_.

his last thought bleeds ahead of him, red, and human.

✠

"just let me help."

"go away."

"angel."

"..."

at the beginning, aki called him 'devil' because in this life that's what he is, but more than that, he thought to keep 'distance' between them. clearly angel did not remember him and considering their positions, maybe that was for the best. but angel almost died, was almost swept away right in front of him, no warning, and no will to live of his own and...and it made aki furious.

but it also made him incredibly sad.

he'd sort of thought himself beyond sadness, after his family, even after himeno, sobbing like some inexperienced child. 

but angel told him to let him die and aki found out what he kind of already knew, didn't want to know though: sadness is like love and it's different for every single person in your life. 

person. angel. devil.

the forest. the sea. and the city.

when aki took his hand it hurt because the whole time until he pulled angel into his arms, he could feel the lifelessness there: angel's hand limp and unresponsive and waiting to die.

today's job was child's play compared to the mess with bomb, but they're both a fair bit dirtier even so. angel's wings have bits of blood and aught else in them, and aki takes a tired step forward to touch one, watching behind a carefully stoic expression, how angel tenses and jerks away. how long they stand like this, he isn't sure, but it would be hard to tell who is more surprised when angel's shoulders sag. his head falls forward and aki watches, oddly transfixed at the neat inverted V the part of his hair makes, the pale of his nape exposed. in conjunction with his wings, the light of his halo, there is something heavenly about him, untouchable in a way not bound to his ability; beautiful the way the people who fear him would paint him or imagine. aki doesn't know what it means, to be reincarnated into half hell and half heaven. without knowing angel, he'd have assumed that was just another way of saying "human".

it's not.

"fine."

the whole affair is silent after that save for the slosh of water of the tub given to angel, whose accommodations are better than future, but not by much. the bath. a cot. a standing rack where he hangs his uniform. water almost reminds angel of something, but not quite. his eyes flutter shut, soothed by the methodical, carefulness of aki's hands, the simultaneousness of something gentle but strong. and maybe he trusts aki more than he means to but not entirely. angel keeps his own hands locked around his ankles under the water, which comes up just below the tops of his knees. he keeps his head down and still, wary to make no sudden movements that might result in an accidental touch.

at some point, aki murmurs with unnecessary softness, "all done."

for some reason angel refuses to understand, he feels like crying. aki, staring down at him, a towel in his carefully obscured hands, aches.

but there's nothing else to say.

✠

"pay more attention." that's the parting shot angel decides to go with, wondering idly and telling himself it doesn't hurt, where he'll go next, now he's seen aki and done what he felt needed doing, his one opportunity to use clairvoyance used up in an instant.

the fingers that close around his wrist are smoother than he remembers, never handled a sword, never killed anyone, and as far as angel knows, his family still living somewhere that snow falls deep and bright white at the solstice. whether it's the difference or the knowledge that aki truly is alright in this life, it's hard to say, but angel freezes when he should probably run. 

"hold on."

when angel tugs to get his hand away, aki does not even need to tighten his grip to make him stay. another difference.

he waits, feels more than sees aki get nearer and then lean down just to peer up at him from below, closer than angel would prefer and also not close enough.

"what?" his voice comes out flat. 

this picture might be even stranger than when they were on the ground, aki holding onto angel, both of them staring at each other in such prevalent confusion it almost looks like someone else placed them together, like pieces on a board. except that's not so; not this time around. a minute passes. aki's phone goes off. this is enough to grab him back out of their shared almost-reverie and, slowly, his fingers uncurl.

angel swallows.

"thank you," aki says finally, a bit awkward.

and angel nods, watches him go, picking up his phone and responding to himeno that he's hurrying and on his way et cetera.

strangely and borderline nostalgic, considerably less perilous. angel almost smiles.

✠

they're walking close enough to brush arms when aki speaks.

"you know, what you said about the town mouse and the country mouse. i don't think i'm the town mouse either."

that's all he says, and it takes angel until death to understand what he was trying to say without saying too much, knowing anything else, inevitably, would be.

angel watches aki succumb to control and hears what he meant beneath what he said:

_i think i'm more like you._

✠

in an old playground, one child stares down at the other from the slide.

it starts to rain.

"i'm coming down," says the one on the slide.

and the one on the ground opens his arms wide like wings and says, "okay."

✠

> _though i would hide it,  
>  in my face it still appears —  
> my fond, secret love.  
> and now he questions me:  
> "is something bothering you?"_   
>  — taira no kanemori —

* 


End file.
